To link to the entire object, paste this link in email, IM or documentTo embed the entire object, paste this HTML in websiteTo link to this page, paste this link in email, IM or documentTo embed this page, paste this HTML in website

r- 7. vrs. iii.-
". 7 .?.!: v. :-
- . ciliy
ii ITT & LOV. HY . rr . :" i : v
73rd Year - No. 292 Good Morning! It's Wednesday, August 26, 1981 8 Sections - 62 Pages - 25 Cents
Mayor's rental housing
failed to meet city code
By Daniel M. Rosen
MIssourlan staff writer
Columbia Mayor John Westlund
for more than a year owned rental
housing that violated the city's hous-ing
code.
He did not have the certificate of
compliance the code requires for
any of the nine houses he owned. For
several of the houses, city records
show that no application for a certifi-cate
was ever filed. And although
city inspectors responding to tenant
complaints ordered major repairs at
several of the houses, a Columbia
Missourian examination found many
apparent violations uncorrected.
Westlund said the certificates
were not issued because the houses
were being worked on. He said, and
city records substantiate, that the
houses were substandard when he
purchased them.
" We spent a ton of money to get
those houses up to compliance,"
Westlund said.
Charlie Scheurich, inspection su--.
pervisor for the Public Works De-partment,
said Westlund's prop-erties
" are probably scheduled for
inspection."
" We're just a little behind,"
Scheurich said.
Operating a rental property with-out
a certificate of compliance is a
misdemeanor punishable by a fine of
$ 254500.
The poor record of Westlund's
properties is not unique. The wide-spread
lack of enforcement of the
city's Minimum Property Standards
Code was reported last month by
KOMU- T- V.
The Columbia Public Works De-partment
faces a backlog of 279
buildings that contain 736 dwelling
units for which the owners have re--
Mayor John Westlund
quested certificates but which have
yet to be inspected. Also, there are
between 1,000 and 1,200 buildings in
Columbia for which there are no re-quests
for certificates of compliance
on record.
To help alleviate the problem, the
Public Works Department has rec-ommended
that inspections take
place every five years instead of the
present four years and that the city
hire an additional housing inspector,
said Ray Beck, director of the Public
Works Department. Buildings with
only one to four dwelling units will
be inspected every four years, Beck
said.
The houses Westlund owned are lo-cated
at 1308 and 1310 Rosemary St.,
1308 and 1312 Paris Road, 1315 Hink- so- n,
1507, 1509 and 1511 Windsor St.
and 611 Maryland Ave. Westlund's
name was listed on records in the
County Assesors office as either
owner or part- own- er of each.
Westlund said Aug. 17 that he no
longer owns any of the houses, and
that several of these properties were
deeded over to other people last
year. However, records in the Re-corder
of Deeds office still show him
as the owner of six of the houses.
Westlund said the man responsible
for getting the buildings up to code
was Tom Ehler, who is no longer em-ployed
by Rental Management Sys-tems,
the company that manages
Westlund's properties. He said Ehler
left the company after Ehler's home
was destroyed in a fire last March.
Ehler could not be reached for com-ment.
Rental Management Systems op-erates
out of the Real Estate Center,
where Westlund's office is also lo-cated.
Westlund is the chairman of
the board of the Real Estate Center,
and also owns Westlund Associates,
a property appraisal firm, and West-lund
Insurance Agency.
Westlund bought the Windsor
Street properties Aug. 26, 1980. He
said that he deeded the properties
over to another owner sometime last
year. No such transfer has been re-corded.
City records show that a complaint
was filed by Jan Horton in June 1980
about 1509 Windsor St. and the house
was inspected July 7, 1980.
The then- owne- rs were told to re-pair
the roof and replace missing
shingles. They were also told to sup-ply
a crawl space with an access
cover, and install gutters with down-spouts.
The west bedroom windows
were to be replaced or repaired and
a handrail covering all the stairs in-stalled.
Conditions that harbored in-sects
and birds were ordered to be
corrected. Holes in the floors, walls
and ceilings had to be repaired and
burlap was supposed to be removed
Itwin Stolton
Jane and Chuck Sadell, 1511 Windsor St., say
their front step has been in disrepair since Au-gust
1980. Mayor John Westlund was part'
owner of the house.
from the second floor bedroom ceil-ings.
No reinspection has occurred since
then.
Earlier this month, a resident of
1509 Windsor St. pointed out a hole in
the bathroom ceiling where water
leaks through. He said that the house
was " not tight in any way." He
showed the two bedrooms that still
have burlap on the ceilings. Also, he
pointed out a furnace sitting unen--
Msltnw Stittoo
The back door of the same house has a broken
screen, despite housing codes that require
screens to be in place from June 1 through
Oct. 15.
closed in one of the first floor bed-rooms.
According to Larry Monroe, of the
Public Works Department, the house
was inspected in February 1979 and
at that time the furnace was partial-ly
enclosed from the bedroom. He
said the owner was told to complete-ly
enclose the furnace to bring it up
to code.
Jane Sadell, 1511 Windsor St., said
that she thought Westlund's compa- -
ny was a " lousy" landlord. Ms. Sa-dell
said that the front step had been
in bad condition for about a year and
that although the management com-pany
knew about it, nobody has fixed
it yet. According to the code, the
steps are supposed to be kept in good
condition.
She said there were no locks on the
ground floor windows, the bathtub
( See COUNTY, Page 18A)
Wall Street
hedges bets
on Reagan
President blamed
for stock declines
By Kenneth B. Noble
New York Times
NEW YORK In late April, the
stock market reached its highest lev-el
in more than eight years. Signs
were that the prolonged period of
high interest rates was finally eas-ing,
and enthusiasm for the Reagan
administration's budget and tax pro-posals
fed a new mood of optimism
on Wall Street.
Since reaching that peak of
1,024.05, the Dow Jones industrial
Insight
average, the oldest and best- know- n
gauge of stock trends, has fallen al-most
125 points.
Stock prices were sharply lower in
early trading Tuesday but the mar-ket
recovered later as investors
sought shares at bargain prices.
Just as investors and analysts gen-erally
credited the Reagan adminis-tration
for the April surge in stock
prices, they are holding it responsi-ble
for much of the decline.
" Wall Street likes to see results
and the Reagan administration has
got a major problem with credibili-ty,"
William M. Le Fevre, a vice
president at Purcell, Graham & Co.,
said Tuesday. " The question is no
longer whether the administration
can balance the budget it's now
doubtful that a balanced budget
could be achieved by 1984 but
whether the whole supply- sid- e con-cept
will ultimately work."
The comment on the supply- sid- e
concept reflected the fact that the fi-nancial
community has remained
( See ANALYSTS, Page 18A)
Prosecution of sheriff being considered
By David Bender
Missourian staff writer
The prosecuting attorney's office
has begun looking into the question
of whether Sheriff Charlie Foster
should be prosecuted for failing to
make financial reports required by
state law.
Meanwhile, Assistant Prosecuting
Attorney Kandy Johnson told the
County Court Tuesday that it could
request prosecution of Foster if it
wanted to do so. She also reminded
the court that any decision about
prosecution would be made by the
prosecutor's offices
Presiding Judge Bill Freeh, after
reading the legal opinion the court
had requested last week, said the
court has no intention of being a
" watchdog" over other officehold-ers.
Foster has failed since he took of-fice
in 1977 to file monthly financial
reports required by law, according
to the findings of an audit in pro-gress
by County Auditor Deborah
Robison. Ms. Johnson has asked for
a written report of the auditor's find-ings.
She also has asked the County
Court for information concerning fil-ing
of monthly reports by all county
officeholders.
One reason she might want the in-formation
would be to help decide if
pressing charges would be fair,
Freeh said. If, for example, most
county officeholders were found ne-glecting
their reports, it would be
unfair to single out one for prosecu-tion,
he said.
But that's not the case, said Coun-ty
Treasurer Kay Murray, who for-wards
those reports to the court af-ter
officeholders make monthly
deposits. Only Foster has failed to
make the reports, she said.
The assistant prosecutor had said
earlier that she needed official infor-mation,
such as the auditor's final
report, before proceeding with an in-- .
vestigation.
State statutes say money collected
by the officeholder must be depos-ited
at the end of each month with
the treasurer, and receipts must be
sent to that office and the county
court. Another statute requires that
a separate monthly report be sent to
the county auditor.
Standard practice in Boone County
has had the treasurer writing three
receipts when the officeholders
make their monthly deposits, said
Ms. Murray. One is kept by the de-positor,
one is sent by the treasurer
to the auditor, and one is sent to the
county clerk, who acts as secretary
for the court, she said.
Ms. Murray said the sheriff has
been merely sending checks with
memos on them to her office, with-out
the necessary reports.
In reviewing the sheriff's book-keeping,
Ms. Robison said she also
found that the department failed to
balance its checking accounts and
had left idle more than $ 100,000, with
$ 17,000 in one account alone.
Foster and his office manager,
Debby Duermeyer, have conceded
the failures, but they have tried to
excuse them. Both have said repeat-edly
that the problems are the result
of overwork, lack of training and ig-norance
of criticisms first made last
year in an outside auditor's report.
$? flHBHMHHHiflr - v & - iJr HIBH
Daryl Saunders with photos of his sons Brian, left, and Marc " tR08.
Father loses sons,
respect for justice
By April Witt
Missourian staff writer
A year- lon- g international custody
dispute ended this month in Boone
County Circuit Court, leaving a Co-lumbia
father of two young boys
feeling that he has suffered a mis-carriage
of justice on both sides of
the Atlantic.
Daryl Saunders, 37, of Rt. 4 was
ordered on Aug. 7 by Circuit Judge
Ellen Roper to return his 8-- and 11- year-- old
sons to their mother, who
lives in England.
Saunders, a native Missourian,
met and married Mary Saunders in
1968 when he was 24 years old and
stationed in England with the Unit-ed
States Air Force. They were di-vorced
11 years later in Bedford
County, England, and the Bedford
County Court gave custody of their
sons, Marc and Brian, to Mrs.
Saunders.
Last summer, Saunders, who
now works for the Union Telephone
Co. in Jefferson City, brought the
boys to Columbia for what was to
be a two- mon- th visit When the two
months were over, he kept them.
Saunders charged that his ex- wi- fe
was an unfit mother and that
she was co- habitati- ng with a man
and allowing him to abuse the two
children.
The case, however, turned on
more technical legal issues. Mis-souri
law requires Missouri judges
to uphold custody decisions of sis-ter
states, but it does not bind them
to foreign rulings. It does, however,
according to Mrs. Saunders' attor-ney,
Charles Franklin, suggest that
judges abide by the legal decisions
of other " civilized nations."
" If England isn't civilized,"
Franklin said, " I don't know what
is.'
Judge Roper apparently agreed.
She said Tuesday that, for her, the
( See FATHER, Page ISA)
Surge in inflation reduces buying power
New York Times
. WASHINGTON The Consumer
Price Index spurted by 1.2 percent in
July, the fastest inflation pace in 16
months, the Labor Department re-ported
Tuesday.
Although most analysts had ex-pected
some acceleration in prices
after three months in which the av-erage
advance was just six- tent- hs of
1 percent, Tuesday's result was sur-prisingly
large.
One immediate implication was
that it seemed to lessen prospects
fc? an early decline in interest rates,
which is a cornerstone of the Reagan
i administration's overall economic
1
strategy.
Much of the increase, however, re-flected
the continued surge in mort-gage
rates and an advance in house
prices that was widely thought to be
at odds with what is happening in the
marketplace. The index, excluding
house prices and mortgages,
climbed by eight- tenth- s of 1 percent.
Food, medical care and transpor-tation,
the latter reflecting a sharp
jump in used car prices and public
transit fare increases in New York
and Chicago, also rose at a faster
rate than in recent months.
In a separate report, the Labor
Department said the buying power
of the average factory worker fell
eight- tent- hs of 1 percent last month
as prices rose faster than earnings.
Over the past year the decline is now
2.9 percent.
The latest inflation figures
prompted comments that ranged
from " aberration" to suggestions
that more unpleasant reports lay
ahead with possibly disastrous con-sequences.
The observation of Richard W.
Rata, chief economist of the United
States Chamber of Commerce, how-ever,
was typical:
" The July data are largely the re-sult
of problems relating to CPI
measurement of home ownership
costs that do not reflect actual hous--
i
ing or financing costs, and tempo-rary
external shocks such as the
Medfly infestation."
In California, where President
Reagan is vacationing, White House
spokesman Larry Speakes said the
administration remained " confident
that our forecast ( of 9.9 percent in-flation
for all of 1981) is still on
track."
Its determination to cut the budget
further and to control money supply
growth will ultimately bring down
interest rates, he said. Speakes
added that the White House re-garded
congressional forecasts this
week for 1982 budget deficits which
are $ 15 billion to $ 18 billion higher
than the administration estimate of
$ 42.5 billion as " faulty."
The 1.2 percent CPI advance for
July is a rate that, if continued for 12
consecutive months, would raise
prices 15.2 percent over the year.
The last preceding double- dig- it an-nual
rate was in February when the
CPI rose 1 percent
Tuesday's inflation report also
broke a string of 15 consecutive
months in which the rate was the
same as, or lower than, the rate in
the same month of the preceding
year.
Donald Ratajczak of Georgia State
( See ECONOMIST, PageISA)
In town
today
7: 30 amUniversity fall semes-ter
classes begin.
7: 30 p. m. Boone County
Home Rule Charter Commis-sion
meets, County- Cit- y Build-ing,
fifth floor.
Index
Business 14A
Classified. I- 2,- 3- C
Opinion ... .. ....... 4A I
Sports 12- 1- 4A I
Theater ISA I
Weather 2A g

r- 7. vrs. iii.-
". 7 .?.!: v. :-
- . ciliy
ii ITT & LOV. HY . rr . :" i : v
73rd Year - No. 292 Good Morning! It's Wednesday, August 26, 1981 8 Sections - 62 Pages - 25 Cents
Mayor's rental housing
failed to meet city code
By Daniel M. Rosen
MIssourlan staff writer
Columbia Mayor John Westlund
for more than a year owned rental
housing that violated the city's hous-ing
code.
He did not have the certificate of
compliance the code requires for
any of the nine houses he owned. For
several of the houses, city records
show that no application for a certifi-cate
was ever filed. And although
city inspectors responding to tenant
complaints ordered major repairs at
several of the houses, a Columbia
Missourian examination found many
apparent violations uncorrected.
Westlund said the certificates
were not issued because the houses
were being worked on. He said, and
city records substantiate, that the
houses were substandard when he
purchased them.
" We spent a ton of money to get
those houses up to compliance,"
Westlund said.
Charlie Scheurich, inspection su--.
pervisor for the Public Works De-partment,
said Westlund's prop-erties
" are probably scheduled for
inspection."
" We're just a little behind,"
Scheurich said.
Operating a rental property with-out
a certificate of compliance is a
misdemeanor punishable by a fine of
$ 254500.
The poor record of Westlund's
properties is not unique. The wide-spread
lack of enforcement of the
city's Minimum Property Standards
Code was reported last month by
KOMU- T- V.
The Columbia Public Works De-partment
faces a backlog of 279
buildings that contain 736 dwelling
units for which the owners have re--
Mayor John Westlund
quested certificates but which have
yet to be inspected. Also, there are
between 1,000 and 1,200 buildings in
Columbia for which there are no re-quests
for certificates of compliance
on record.
To help alleviate the problem, the
Public Works Department has rec-ommended
that inspections take
place every five years instead of the
present four years and that the city
hire an additional housing inspector,
said Ray Beck, director of the Public
Works Department. Buildings with
only one to four dwelling units will
be inspected every four years, Beck
said.
The houses Westlund owned are lo-cated
at 1308 and 1310 Rosemary St.,
1308 and 1312 Paris Road, 1315 Hink- so- n,
1507, 1509 and 1511 Windsor St.
and 611 Maryland Ave. Westlund's
name was listed on records in the
County Assesors office as either
owner or part- own- er of each.
Westlund said Aug. 17 that he no
longer owns any of the houses, and
that several of these properties were
deeded over to other people last
year. However, records in the Re-corder
of Deeds office still show him
as the owner of six of the houses.
Westlund said the man responsible
for getting the buildings up to code
was Tom Ehler, who is no longer em-ployed
by Rental Management Sys-tems,
the company that manages
Westlund's properties. He said Ehler
left the company after Ehler's home
was destroyed in a fire last March.
Ehler could not be reached for com-ment.
Rental Management Systems op-erates
out of the Real Estate Center,
where Westlund's office is also lo-cated.
Westlund is the chairman of
the board of the Real Estate Center,
and also owns Westlund Associates,
a property appraisal firm, and West-lund
Insurance Agency.
Westlund bought the Windsor
Street properties Aug. 26, 1980. He
said that he deeded the properties
over to another owner sometime last
year. No such transfer has been re-corded.
City records show that a complaint
was filed by Jan Horton in June 1980
about 1509 Windsor St. and the house
was inspected July 7, 1980.
The then- owne- rs were told to re-pair
the roof and replace missing
shingles. They were also told to sup-ply
a crawl space with an access
cover, and install gutters with down-spouts.
The west bedroom windows
were to be replaced or repaired and
a handrail covering all the stairs in-stalled.
Conditions that harbored in-sects
and birds were ordered to be
corrected. Holes in the floors, walls
and ceilings had to be repaired and
burlap was supposed to be removed
Itwin Stolton
Jane and Chuck Sadell, 1511 Windsor St., say
their front step has been in disrepair since Au-gust
1980. Mayor John Westlund was part'
owner of the house.
from the second floor bedroom ceil-ings.
No reinspection has occurred since
then.
Earlier this month, a resident of
1509 Windsor St. pointed out a hole in
the bathroom ceiling where water
leaks through. He said that the house
was " not tight in any way." He
showed the two bedrooms that still
have burlap on the ceilings. Also, he
pointed out a furnace sitting unen--
Msltnw Stittoo
The back door of the same house has a broken
screen, despite housing codes that require
screens to be in place from June 1 through
Oct. 15.
closed in one of the first floor bed-rooms.
According to Larry Monroe, of the
Public Works Department, the house
was inspected in February 1979 and
at that time the furnace was partial-ly
enclosed from the bedroom. He
said the owner was told to complete-ly
enclose the furnace to bring it up
to code.
Jane Sadell, 1511 Windsor St., said
that she thought Westlund's compa- -
ny was a " lousy" landlord. Ms. Sa-dell
said that the front step had been
in bad condition for about a year and
that although the management com-pany
knew about it, nobody has fixed
it yet. According to the code, the
steps are supposed to be kept in good
condition.
She said there were no locks on the
ground floor windows, the bathtub
( See COUNTY, Page 18A)
Wall Street
hedges bets
on Reagan
President blamed
for stock declines
By Kenneth B. Noble
New York Times
NEW YORK In late April, the
stock market reached its highest lev-el
in more than eight years. Signs
were that the prolonged period of
high interest rates was finally eas-ing,
and enthusiasm for the Reagan
administration's budget and tax pro-posals
fed a new mood of optimism
on Wall Street.
Since reaching that peak of
1,024.05, the Dow Jones industrial
Insight
average, the oldest and best- know- n
gauge of stock trends, has fallen al-most
125 points.
Stock prices were sharply lower in
early trading Tuesday but the mar-ket
recovered later as investors
sought shares at bargain prices.
Just as investors and analysts gen-erally
credited the Reagan adminis-tration
for the April surge in stock
prices, they are holding it responsi-ble
for much of the decline.
" Wall Street likes to see results
and the Reagan administration has
got a major problem with credibili-ty,"
William M. Le Fevre, a vice
president at Purcell, Graham & Co.,
said Tuesday. " The question is no
longer whether the administration
can balance the budget it's now
doubtful that a balanced budget
could be achieved by 1984 but
whether the whole supply- sid- e con-cept
will ultimately work."
The comment on the supply- sid- e
concept reflected the fact that the fi-nancial
community has remained
( See ANALYSTS, Page 18A)
Prosecution of sheriff being considered
By David Bender
Missourian staff writer
The prosecuting attorney's office
has begun looking into the question
of whether Sheriff Charlie Foster
should be prosecuted for failing to
make financial reports required by
state law.
Meanwhile, Assistant Prosecuting
Attorney Kandy Johnson told the
County Court Tuesday that it could
request prosecution of Foster if it
wanted to do so. She also reminded
the court that any decision about
prosecution would be made by the
prosecutor's offices
Presiding Judge Bill Freeh, after
reading the legal opinion the court
had requested last week, said the
court has no intention of being a
" watchdog" over other officehold-ers.
Foster has failed since he took of-fice
in 1977 to file monthly financial
reports required by law, according
to the findings of an audit in pro-gress
by County Auditor Deborah
Robison. Ms. Johnson has asked for
a written report of the auditor's find-ings.
She also has asked the County
Court for information concerning fil-ing
of monthly reports by all county
officeholders.
One reason she might want the in-formation
would be to help decide if
pressing charges would be fair,
Freeh said. If, for example, most
county officeholders were found ne-glecting
their reports, it would be
unfair to single out one for prosecu-tion,
he said.
But that's not the case, said Coun-ty
Treasurer Kay Murray, who for-wards
those reports to the court af-ter
officeholders make monthly
deposits. Only Foster has failed to
make the reports, she said.
The assistant prosecutor had said
earlier that she needed official infor-mation,
such as the auditor's final
report, before proceeding with an in-- .
vestigation.
State statutes say money collected
by the officeholder must be depos-ited
at the end of each month with
the treasurer, and receipts must be
sent to that office and the county
court. Another statute requires that
a separate monthly report be sent to
the county auditor.
Standard practice in Boone County
has had the treasurer writing three
receipts when the officeholders
make their monthly deposits, said
Ms. Murray. One is kept by the de-positor,
one is sent by the treasurer
to the auditor, and one is sent to the
county clerk, who acts as secretary
for the court, she said.
Ms. Murray said the sheriff has
been merely sending checks with
memos on them to her office, with-out
the necessary reports.
In reviewing the sheriff's book-keeping,
Ms. Robison said she also
found that the department failed to
balance its checking accounts and
had left idle more than $ 100,000, with
$ 17,000 in one account alone.
Foster and his office manager,
Debby Duermeyer, have conceded
the failures, but they have tried to
excuse them. Both have said repeat-edly
that the problems are the result
of overwork, lack of training and ig-norance
of criticisms first made last
year in an outside auditor's report.
$? flHBHMHHHiflr - v & - iJr HIBH
Daryl Saunders with photos of his sons Brian, left, and Marc " tR08.
Father loses sons,
respect for justice
By April Witt
Missourian staff writer
A year- lon- g international custody
dispute ended this month in Boone
County Circuit Court, leaving a Co-lumbia
father of two young boys
feeling that he has suffered a mis-carriage
of justice on both sides of
the Atlantic.
Daryl Saunders, 37, of Rt. 4 was
ordered on Aug. 7 by Circuit Judge
Ellen Roper to return his 8-- and 11- year-- old
sons to their mother, who
lives in England.
Saunders, a native Missourian,
met and married Mary Saunders in
1968 when he was 24 years old and
stationed in England with the Unit-ed
States Air Force. They were di-vorced
11 years later in Bedford
County, England, and the Bedford
County Court gave custody of their
sons, Marc and Brian, to Mrs.
Saunders.
Last summer, Saunders, who
now works for the Union Telephone
Co. in Jefferson City, brought the
boys to Columbia for what was to
be a two- mon- th visit When the two
months were over, he kept them.
Saunders charged that his ex- wi- fe
was an unfit mother and that
she was co- habitati- ng with a man
and allowing him to abuse the two
children.
The case, however, turned on
more technical legal issues. Mis-souri
law requires Missouri judges
to uphold custody decisions of sis-ter
states, but it does not bind them
to foreign rulings. It does, however,
according to Mrs. Saunders' attor-ney,
Charles Franklin, suggest that
judges abide by the legal decisions
of other " civilized nations."
" If England isn't civilized,"
Franklin said, " I don't know what
is.'
Judge Roper apparently agreed.
She said Tuesday that, for her, the
( See FATHER, Page ISA)
Surge in inflation reduces buying power
New York Times
. WASHINGTON The Consumer
Price Index spurted by 1.2 percent in
July, the fastest inflation pace in 16
months, the Labor Department re-ported
Tuesday.
Although most analysts had ex-pected
some acceleration in prices
after three months in which the av-erage
advance was just six- tent- hs of
1 percent, Tuesday's result was sur-prisingly
large.
One immediate implication was
that it seemed to lessen prospects
fc? an early decline in interest rates,
which is a cornerstone of the Reagan
i administration's overall economic
1
strategy.
Much of the increase, however, re-flected
the continued surge in mort-gage
rates and an advance in house
prices that was widely thought to be
at odds with what is happening in the
marketplace. The index, excluding
house prices and mortgages,
climbed by eight- tenth- s of 1 percent.
Food, medical care and transpor-tation,
the latter reflecting a sharp
jump in used car prices and public
transit fare increases in New York
and Chicago, also rose at a faster
rate than in recent months.
In a separate report, the Labor
Department said the buying power
of the average factory worker fell
eight- tent- hs of 1 percent last month
as prices rose faster than earnings.
Over the past year the decline is now
2.9 percent.
The latest inflation figures
prompted comments that ranged
from " aberration" to suggestions
that more unpleasant reports lay
ahead with possibly disastrous con-sequences.
The observation of Richard W.
Rata, chief economist of the United
States Chamber of Commerce, how-ever,
was typical:
" The July data are largely the re-sult
of problems relating to CPI
measurement of home ownership
costs that do not reflect actual hous--
i
ing or financing costs, and tempo-rary
external shocks such as the
Medfly infestation."
In California, where President
Reagan is vacationing, White House
spokesman Larry Speakes said the
administration remained " confident
that our forecast ( of 9.9 percent in-flation
for all of 1981) is still on
track."
Its determination to cut the budget
further and to control money supply
growth will ultimately bring down
interest rates, he said. Speakes
added that the White House re-garded
congressional forecasts this
week for 1982 budget deficits which
are $ 15 billion to $ 18 billion higher
than the administration estimate of
$ 42.5 billion as " faulty."
The 1.2 percent CPI advance for
July is a rate that, if continued for 12
consecutive months, would raise
prices 15.2 percent over the year.
The last preceding double- dig- it an-nual
rate was in February when the
CPI rose 1 percent
Tuesday's inflation report also
broke a string of 15 consecutive
months in which the rate was the
same as, or lower than, the rate in
the same month of the preceding
year.
Donald Ratajczak of Georgia State
( See ECONOMIST, PageISA)
In town
today
7: 30 amUniversity fall semes-ter
classes begin.
7: 30 p. m. Boone County
Home Rule Charter Commis-sion
meets, County- Cit- y Build-ing,
fifth floor.
Index
Business 14A
Classified. I- 2,- 3- C
Opinion ... .. ....... 4A I
Sports 12- 1- 4A I
Theater ISA I
Weather 2A g